"That's the tracking note," said Dick, with suppressed eagerness. "We'd better get our horses, sir."
Through the town streets Jan faltered only twice or thrice, and then not for long. Within ten minutes he was on the open prairie, heading northwestward, as for Long Lake, his pace steady and increasing now, his deep-flewed muzzle low to the ground.
For more than two-and-twenty miles Jan loped along over the cocolike dust of the trail, and never faltered once save at the side of a little slough, where the two horsemen in his rear spent a few anxious minutes while Jan paced this way and that, with indecision showing in each movement of his massive head. And then, again with a rich deep bay—a note of reassurance for the horseman, and of doom for a fugitive, if such an one could have heard it—Jan was off again on the trail, closely, but by no means hurryingly, followed by the captain and Dick.
In the twenty-second mile Jan brought his followers to the door of a settler's little two-roomed shack, and then, within the minute, was off again along the side of a half-mile stretch of wheat. Captain Arnutt dismounted for a moment to speak to a woman who came to the door. Not half an hour earlier she said, she had given a drink of tea and some bread and meat to a dark, thin man with a red handkerchief tied over his head. "A Dago he was," she said. And Captain Arnutt bit hard on one end of his mustache as he thanked the woman, mounted again, and galloped off after Dick and Jan.
As he rode, the captain turned back the flap of his magazine-pistol holster; but the precaution was not needed. Jan was traveling at the gallop now, and the height of his muzzle from the ground showed clearly that he was on a warm trail, which, for such nostrils as his, required no holding at all.
It was under the lee of a heap of last year's wheat-straw that Jan came to the end of his trail; his fore feet planted hard in the dust before him, his head well lifted, his jaws parted to give free passage to the deep, bell-like call of his baying. The man with the red 'kerchief tied over his head was evidently roused from sleep by Jan, and though the hound showed no sign of molesting him, yet must he have formed a terrifying picture for the newly opened eyes of the Italian. Almost before the man had raised himself into a sitting posture Dick Vaughan had jumped from the saddle and was beside him.
"Don't move," said Dick, "and the dog won't hurt you. If you move your hands he'll be at your throat. See! Better let me slip these on—so! All right, Jan, boy. Stay there."
When Captain Arnutt dismounted he found his subordinate standing beside a handcuffed man, who sat on the ground, glaring hopelessly at the hound responsible for his capture. Jan's tongue hung out from one side of his parted jaws, and his face expressed satisfaction and good humor. He had done his job and done it well. The thought of injuring his quarry had never occurred to him, as Dick Vaughan very well knew, despite his warning remark to the Italian. But although Jan had had no thought of attacking the recumbent man he had trailed, he was very fully conscious that this man was his quarry. The handcuffing episode had not been lost upon him.
From the outset he had known that he and Dick were hunting that day. Why they hunted man he had no idea. Personally, he had not so much pursued an individual as he had hunted a certain smell. In coming upon the sleeping Italian he had tracked down this particular smell. His conception of his duty was, having tracked the smell to the man, to hand the man over to Dick. That marked for him the end of his work; but not by any means the end of his interest in the upshot of it.